The women of The Color Purple have unimaginably hard lives. They’re subject to an unrelenting series of rape, abuse, and racism. The musical (currently on tour to the SHN Orpheum) is touching and uplifting in spite of that, because it’s the story of how they overcome all those forces...

Paula West has opened a two-week engagement at Feinstein’s at the Nikko in San Francisco. This popular cabaret performer has captured the hearts of jazz lovers over the years due to her extraordinary devotion to and understanding of the complexity and beauty of jazz classics as well as other...

A not-too-distant future, where democracy has devolved into theocracy and oppressive forces are ripe for revolt.

Berkeley Rep has announced that David Cale’s thriller Harry Clarke will kick off its next season. The seven-play season also features Selina Fillinger’s feminist satire, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive; Berkeley native Eisa Davis’ lyrical coming-of-age story, Bulrusher; Leslye Headland’s comedy,...

Take some trailer trash, a magic-marker sniffing cowboy, toilet brush wielding hootchie mommas and f-bomb dropping, drifting stripper.

The Devil is in the Delivery

Director Dale Albright brings us back to ourselves in this well-crafted production about how characters come together after the death of a gay dancer.

A good friend often asks why I subject myself to the same musical over and over again. That’s a fair question, especially when the show in question is as silly a bit of fluff as Little Shop of Horrors. Watching the same show done by different companies trains the...

Nathaniel Hackmann is a standout. He plays Gaston with a likable swagger. At full-on bravado, he struts, flexes, and prunes as a harem swoons.

Written before World War II, it harkens to a simpler America.